The Wicked West is the newest offering from the team that gave us the World War I adventure/horror tale The Black Forest. I loved Black Forest, but I have to admit to a little disappointment with The Wicked West, probably due in some part to the higher expectations that I had for this one. Livingston and Tinnell hang their western tale on a flashback during the '30s, and unfortunately, I thought that this dual story structure didn't quite work, and indeed, it really only took away from space the story badly needed to build mood and give us a little more in the way of explanation. Still, while the story-within-a-story framework didn't work for me, I did find things to like in The Wicked West, including its laconic protagonist Coleridge and the stirring artwork by Neil Vokes and Scott Keating.
There's something kind of weird about the pacing of this book. It starts off with a crackling gunfight, but there's no explanation to be found for why the gunfight breaks out, nor is it ever explained how it ties into the revelations of who and what Coleridge is. It establishes that he's a badass, but that's about it. Then we immediately jump to the 1930s, where a grandfatherly figure is taking his grandson to see a western/horror movie, and it's pretty clear that it's based on experiences he himself has seen, but with a Hollywood-ized, almost comical filter on it. It's a jarring change, and it's not the last one that we'll see throughout the story. It's clear that Livingston and Tinnell have a story they want to tell, but a lot of it is left up to reader inference rather than actually revealed in the course of the story.
The movie/"real" division is also a mistake in the tone of the book, which is a crucial factor in anything with a horror element. The reader can't really ever be scared, because we're being reminded constantly that life went on pretty much as normal after that, and we're seeing the very events turned into an almost jokey movie scare version at the same time. This balance is not impossible to hit, it was done well in the Scream movies for instance, but the creators here don't hit that balance, and instead it reads very much like we're getting two different stories. Perhaps most importantly, the payoff for these two stories, the reason we see a flashforward into 1932, isn't really strong enough to justify the dual storytelling. It's not a shocker of an ending, nor does it give the book any more emotional weight.
If there is one success in the dual story approach, though, it is to be found in the artwork. Vokes and Keating do a terrific job of setting the cleaned-up version of the west apart from its reality, and certainly their vision of the evil creatures that plague the town of Javer's Tanks is more bloody and dangerous than the bloodless, suave Hollywood monster in the movie. In addition, the action in The Wicked West is probably the strongest aspect of the entire story, with imaginative settings and strong choreography that makes the reader believe in Coleridge's skills and lack of fear.
I just wish that there was more to the book than solid action and an interesting premise. Livingston and Tinnell don't ever really introduce their lead and who or what he is, nor do they clearly introduce the monsters, everyone just sort of meets up, as if it were previously agreed, in the town of Javer's Tanks and has a big showdown. There are nods toward characterization, like the friendship of two boys or the advances of a female student on the teacher, but they don't really flow smoothly, and come off as characterization bolted onto the high concept idea more than anything else. I'll still take a look at anything this team does in the future, but whether compared to The Black Forest or just looked at as a standalone western/horror story, this one's a bit disappointing. 4/10
